The present embodiments relate to wireless communications systems and, more particularly, to space time encoded wireless communication systems with multipath resolution receivers.
Wireless communications are prevalent in business, personal, and other applications, and as a result the technology for such communications continues to advance in various areas. One such advancement includes the use of spread spectrum communications, including that of code division multiple access (“CDMA”) and wideband code division multiple access (“WCDMA”) cellular communications. In such communications, a user station (e.g., a hand held cellular phone) communicates with a base station, where typically the base station corresponds to a “cell.” CDMA communications are by way of transmitting symbols from a transmitter to a receiver, and the symbols are modulated using a spreading code which consists of a series of binary pulses. The code runs at a higher rate than the symbol rate and determines the actual transmission bandwidth. In the current industry, each piece of CDMA signal transmitted according to this code is said to be a “chip,” where each chip corresponds to an element in the CDMA code. Thus, the chip frequency defines the rate of the CDMA code. WCDMA includes alternative methods of data transfer, one being frequency division duplex (“FDD”) and another being time division duplex (“TDD”), where the uplink and downlink channels are asymmetric for FDD and symmetric for TDD. Another wireless standard involves time division multiple access (“TDMA”) apparatus, which also communicate symbols and are used by way of example in cellular systems. TDMA communications are transmitted as a group of packets in a time period, where the time period is divided into slots (i.e., packets) so that multiple receivers may each access meaningful information during a different part of that time period. In other words, in a group of TDMA receivers, each receiver is designated a slot in the time period, and that slot repeats for each group of successive packets transmitted to the receiver. Accordingly, each receiver is able to identify the information intended for it by synchronizing to the group of packets and then deciphering the time slot corresponding to the given receiver. Given the preceding, CDMA transmissions are receiver-distinguished in response to codes, while TDMA transmissions are receiver-distinguished in response to orthogonal time slots.
Since CDMA and TDMA communications are along wireless media, then the travel of those communications can be affected in many ways, and generally these effects are referred to as the channel effect on the communication. For example, consider a transmitter with a single antenna transmitting to a receiver with a single antenna. The transmitted signal is likely reflected by objects such as the ground, mountains, buildings, and other things that it contacts. In addition, there may be other signals that interfere with the transmitted signal. As a result, when the transmitted communication arrives at the receiver, it has been affected by the channel effect. As a result, the originally-transmitted data is more difficult to decipher due to the added channel effect. As a result of the channel effect, various approaches have been developed in an effort to reduce or remove that effect from the received signal so that the originally-transmitted data is properly recognized. In other words, these approaches endeavor to improve signal-to-noise ratio (“SNR”), thereby improving other data accuracy measures (e.g., bit error rate (“BER”), frame error rate (“FER”), and symbol error rate (“SER”)). Several of these approaches are discussed below.
One approach to improve SNR is referred to in the art as antenna diversity, which refers to using multiple antennas at the transmitter, receiver, or both. For example, in the prior art, a multiple-antenna transmitter is used to transmit the same data on each antenna where the data is coded in some manner differently for each antenna. Examples of such encoding include space-time transmit diversity (“STTD”), wherein a first antenna transmits a block of two input symbols in a first order while a second antenna transmits, by way of example, the complex conjugates of the same block of two symbols and wherein those conjugates are output in a reversed order relative to how they are transmitted by the first antenna and the second symbol is a negative value relative to its value as an input. Accordingly, there is some redundancy in the sense that a symbol transmitted by one transmit antenna is also transmitted in another form along a different transmit antenna for the same transmitter. In any event, the approach of using more than one transmit antenna at the transmitter is termed transmit antenna diversity; similarly, using more than one receive antenna at the receiver is termed receive antenna diversity. Antenna diversity is also sometimes referred to as spatial diversity because each antenna in a set of either transmit or receiver antennas is separated from one another by some defined space. Still further, note that in the STTD system the transmitted signals represent blocks of symbols (or symbol samples) as opposed to single sequential symbols. This transmission of signals including such blocks is sometimes referred to as time diversity because each block of symbols represents a period of time. Also, where time diversity is combined with multiple transmit antennas such as in the example of an STTD system, then such a system is sometimes referred to as providing space time encoding. Another type of known space time encoding system is an orthogonal transmit diversity (“OTD”) system. In an OTD system, a block of symbols is defined, such as a block of two symbols. Then, the first of the two symbols is transmitted twice along a first antenna, while at the same time the second of the two symbols is transmitted along the second antenna, with the second symbol being transmitted in an unchanged fashion first and then followed by the negative of that second symbol. In this manner, the signals along the first and second antennas are orthogonal with respect to one another. Further, here there also is redundancy, but in the sense that a symbol transmitted by one transmit antenna is also transmitted in another form along that same transmit antenna for the same transmitter. In any event, in a space time encoding system, in some instances (e.g., multiple-input multiple-output, discussed below) the receiver includes the same, or a greater, number of antennas as the transmitter, whereas in others (e.g., single STTD, single OTD) the number of receive antennas may be less than the transmitting antennas because the receive antenna is receiving orthogonal signals. Of course, in any event each receiver antenna receives signals from all of the transmit antennas, and these signals also are affected by respective channel effects. Thus, the receiver operates to exploit the use of its multiple antennas as well as recognizing the use of multiple transmit antennas in an effort to more accurately estimate the data streams transmitted by the transmitter.
Another approach to improve SNR combines antenna diversity with the need for higher data rate. Specifically, a closed-loop multiple-input multiple-output (“MIMO”) system with transmit diversity has been devised, where each transmit antenna transmits a distinct and respective data stream. In a MIMO system, each transmit antenna transmits symbols that are independent from the symbols transmitted by any other transmit antennas for the transmitter, and there is no redundancy either along a single or with respect to multiple of the transmit antennas. Thus, the advantage of a MIMO scheme using distinct and non-redundant streams is that it can achieve higher data rates as compared to a transmit diversity system.
Certain of the above techniques have been combined in a written description entitled “Multiple Antennas and Multiuser Detection in High Data Rate Systems,” by Howard Huang and Harish Viswanathan (0-7803-5718-3/00, copyright 2000 by IEEE). Particularly, the description proposes a high data rate system in which a base station transmits to a single user at a time on 16 CDMA channels. Multiple transmit antennas are provided to permit space-time spreading (“STS”), which is analogous in certain respects to the above-discussed STTD approach and which achieves transmit diversity. The description also states that this technique, sometimes known as Bell Labs Layered Space-Time (“BLAST”) transmission, requires multiple receive antennas and multi-user detection to spatially resolve the mutually interfering signals.
While the preceding approaches and proposals provide steady improvements in wireless communications, the present inventors recognize that still further improvements may be made, including by addressing some of the drawbacks of the prior art. As one example of a drawback, older CDMA systems used a greater number of chips to modulate each complex symbol, where this number of chips per symbol is typically referred to as the spreading factor (or spreading gain). However, more recently, systems are being developed and often expressly required to use a lower spreading factor, such as in the case of certain high date rate implementations under 3 GPP. Due to the lower spreading factor, however, the duration for transmitting a complex symbol has been considerably reduced over previous CDMA systems, and as a result the symbol duration is much closer in time to the duration of the channel delay spread. Consequently, the orthogonality provided by the use of different CDMA codes is diminished, thereby jeopardizing receiver performance. Specifically, recall from earlier that CDMA signals incur a channel effect between the transmitter and receiver. One result of the channel effect is that when a signal is transmitted, that same transmitted signal arrives at the receiver at different times, that is, having traveled different lengths due to reflections in the channel between the transmitter and receiver; each different arrival of the same originally-transmitted signal is typically referred to as a multipath. Typically, multipaths interfere with one another. In CDMA, one type of multipath interference effect is multiuser interference (“MUI”). Also in CDMA as well as TDMA, multipaths causes interference effects that are sometimes referred to as intersymbol interference (“ISI”) because each path includes transmitted data referred to as symbols. Ideally, however, the orthogonality implemented by CDMA reduces ISI to a negligible value and, as a result, often a less complex receiver structure may be implemented in a CDMA system. However, the above-described lowering of the spreading factor reduces the benefit of orthogonality and consequently increases the concern for ISI. Many earlier designs or proposals fail to adequately address this newly-developing problem. In a similar manner, the above-discussed paper by Huang and Viswanathan proposes a transmission technique without detailing how to implement a practical and feasible receiver, particularly given the potential of so-called multipaths and the increased likelihood of ISI. As another example of a drawback, certain of the above-described systems are limited in data rates, and there is therefore a benefit in developing a system with still further improvements in data rate.
In view of the above, there arises a need to address the drawbacks of the prior art and the preceding proposals, as is achieved by the preferred embodiments described below.